Mark Dayton

Recent Articles

Organizers of the 2018 Super Bowl, which the National Football League awarded to Minnesota last week, boast that it will be a “public-private partnership” expected to bring millions to the Twin Cities and integrate with other local winter activities. Hosting the NFL championship game is expected to be the first marquee event at the new Vikings stadium now under construction, said Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton. “The reason to build the stadium was not to win a Super Bowl but to bring jobs and economic growth to Minnesota,” he explained at the May 21 press conference at the State Capitol, a day after the bid was announced. “The reason was to keep the Vikings here, and some 7,000 Minnesotans to work there for the next couple of years to build the stadium, Dayton said. But it also would “serve as a catalyst for other economic development” for downtown Minneapolis. Continue Reading →

“State of emergency!” declared Governor Mark Dayton, January 27, 2014. Minnesota is cancelled due to the cold, said Star Tribune meteorologist Paul Douglas, tongue in cheek. But it’s no joke. Governor Dayton activated Minnesota’s National Guard to help with safety and rescue situations, opened Minnesota National Guard armories as shelter for people without heat, and called for a meeting with propane sellers and distributors to discuss price gouging. The Governor pushed to the sidelines issues not of life and death, lesser issues like the Vikings stadium and the Minnesota bid for Super Bowl 2018, as he spoke to the hardship suffered by Minnesotans and others in the upper Midwest due to the dangerous shortage of propane gas to combat the cold in a nation of abundant energy. Continue Reading →

The power of caring commitment is amazing. For instance it saw, in 2012 alone, 500,000 sandwiches donated to the hungry homeless principally through the tireless energies of Allan “The Sandwich Man” Law, who has bent his back to this labor since 1967. Those sandwiches, it bears pointing out, are given out at an important time in the day — rather the night — of the disenfranchised. Shelters and soup kitchens shut down in the early evening, and if you have nowhere to go and missed that last night meal, you are out of luck. That is why Law starts his deliveries nine at night and continues until the next morning, driving throughout Minneapolis, hitting spots that include bridge underpasses and other places the homeless habitually hole up. Continue Reading →

No Wrong Door gives sexually exploited children support, not punishment

News Analysis

By Dwight Hobbes

Contributing Writer

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton, signed the Safe Harbor for Sexually Exploited Youth Act into law in 2011; it will take effect in 2014. This bill officially identifies and treats trafficked children and adolescents as crime victims, not criminals. Legislation to amend the bill, utilizing the “No Wrong Door” model, is now before lawmakers to put teeth in the original edict. The Safe Harbor for Sexually Exploited Youth Act, according to a press release issued by the Minnesota Human Trafficking Task Force, the Family Partnership, and the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota, “charged the state departments of Public Safety, Human Services and Health with the task of convening diverse experts, including law enforcement personnel, prosecutors, public defenders, service providers, advocates, survivors of sex trafficking and others to create a comprehensive prevention and intervention model to successfully implement the Safe Harbor Act.” After a year and a half of convening, diverse experts put No Wrong Door before the legislature this past January. There are, in all of Minnesota, only four beds to shelter sexually trafficked girls and none for sexually trafficked boys — a tragic reality No Wrong Door is being advanced to address. Continue Reading →

For years I have defined as ill-conceived any planning that mostly serves the planners and their agency/bosses and not those they plan for, that too often leave African Americans out of their equations, purposefully failing or refusing to meet both diversity and equity hiring requirements and appropriate funding or financing best practices regarding construction, education, housing, jobs and public safety. I have long written about the perils of such ill-conceived planning regarding the Vikings stadium. The Star Tribune reminded us of these perils in articles last week, April 8 and 9, perils that could lead to a failed stadium project and loss of the Vikings to another city. There is anxiety in the Minnesota legislature. Read from my over 25 columns on this gathered together in a solutions paper for the Vikings stadium situation, at www.theminneapolisstory.com/solutionpapers/47SaveVikings.htm. Continue Reading →

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) mandates that beginning in 2014, each state either must have a health exchange available that allows qualified individuals to buy coverage, or join with other states to create regional exchanges. Or can let the federal government do it. It is intended not only to offer affordable health insurance to consumers, but also to increase competition among private insurers, giving their prospective consumers the ability to choose from at least four different levels of policies. Minnesota’s new health insurance exchange is now a couple of steps from becoming reality after the Minnesota House last week voted 72 to 58 on a health insurance exchange bill. Minnesota is among 17 states plus the District of Columbia that are setting state-based exchanges. Continue Reading →

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) in March celebrated its two-year anniversary since President Barack Obama signed it into law. Since it became law, its key provisions include insurance companies now being more accountable in their practices, providing new coverage for young adults, making prescription drugs affordable for seniors, and covering preventive services with no deductible or copay. The healthcare law now prohibits insurance companies from refusing to insure children under age 19 with serious illnesses or limiting care because an individual’s expenses have reached a dollar limit imposed by their insurance company. “A whole new set of rules for insurance companies — a new ball game,” says U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebellius during a March 23 visit to the Twin Cities to commemorate the ACA’s second anniversary. Sebellius, U.S. Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.), U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) and Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton all heard stories from several women on how the ACA has helped them at the home of a nurse who lives in Spring Lake Park. Continue Reading →